NOTHING, no government or social policy can affect the quality of life for a child if the parent(s) involved are not willing to participate in the child's life.
You can't even make a law stating who and who should not be allowed to procreate.
First, as for video games and developmental health, I owe my quick reflexes and good hand eye coordination to video games. I have saved my life, and the lives of others using quick wits and reflexes by avoiding an accident in a car, two concepts that video games help develop in children. The twitchy and fast gameplay that most games offer help to improve these skills, which could otherwise never be developed except playing a few types of sports. Sports are less available to children then video games, especially those that require expensive equipement or an unwilling parent to drive them to and from.
I will agree that those children playing too much video games, or too much TV for that matter, could have health problems from lack of excersize and fresh air, but then, that is a parental issue, not one that a society should debate or develop laws about. Again, nothing will impact a child's heath except the impact of the parent on that child.
As for violence and mental development, I will agree that there are some games that children should never play, and I question the reason for their existence even for adult sences. Again, parents should be more pro-active in observing their children and either not-allowing them to play violent games, or to recognize when a child is developing abhorrent from playing them. Many children develop and mature quicker then others, a general age policy is never approprite, only parental discression is advisable.
If ANY social policy needs to be made it is one where parents should have easy access to information teaching them how to become more effective parents. They shouldn't have to run out and buy Dr. Phil books or videos, the governement should be able to offer free programs and literature that can help a parent deal with a kid that doesn't want to go out an play, at least help the parents grow a brass pair to be able to handle a beligerent childen that won't listen to them when they say enough video games is enough.
Wasting time and money debating policy about video games is just that, a waste of time and money. The US in particular is so fearful of social programs, its considered Un-American for the government to step in an educate the population into how to be better parents, yet it is very american to create meaningless laws that prevent a child from buying a mature rated video game. Kids are going to get that game for their birthday or for Christmas because their parents will get it for them without even considering reading the warning label.
I am tired of hearing this debate, and hearing about parents wanting to sue the gaming industry because their fat kid has heart problems because of inactivity caused by long and excessive video game play. Parents need to accept their right and responsibilities to raise their kids properly, not use video games and its industry as a scapegoat for bad parenting.
XBOX has nothing to do with Direct X
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The Xbox vs. PC Gaming
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Direct X has been a PC API all along, I didn't even think XBOX games were based on it, or at least, some offshoot from it different then the PC API.
As for Microsoft changing Direct X on nVidia, well, MS could do what it wants, Direct X ISN'T an industry standard, its an MS standard. Neither is OpenGL an industry standard, but OpenGL is a cross platform API which ATI and nVidia could make more robust by optimizing their drivers for it, if they wanted to.
Has the XBOX really impacted PC gaming? Well, considering that the most innovative and technically advanced games are released for the PC first, I don't think so. Quake, Half-life are two rendering engines that have been ported over to XBOX games. There is so much porting of PC games to game consoles, I would suggest that the only reason why game consoles exist today is because of PC gaming.
Lastely, as long as PC technology evolves and improves every 6 - 8 months while game consoles remain static for 5 - 6 years at a time, I can't say the XBOX has had any impact on PC gaming. The Xbox360 may be revolutionary today, but give it 3 - 6 months and nVidia/ATI will release a video card that outperforms the 360 by a factor of 2, followed by one a year from now by a factor of 4, etc, etc, etc until the Xbox720 or whatever.
Sorry, I don't believe for a second someone can make a $100 laptop, except in some university geek's pipedream.
Not to say that we don't need cheap access to technology, just that this industry isn't going to make it happen.
Look, most toys with built-in LCD screen cost more then $100, and they have far less features and spec's then what the MIT group. I have yet to see a portable DVD player under $100 worth is weight in salt.
They say that current notebooks are fat, they are going to cut out this excess to make it cheaper. MIT says that most notebooks has features to manage other features that are not needed? Nice marketing spin, but completely meaningless. Business partners are going to gobble up that line, but in reality, any notebook maker is always looking for ways to trim the fat, to ensure that the notebooks are LIGHT, use LESS POWER, so they can RUN LONGER on a battery. Today's notebooks are streamlined and don't contained redundant or superfluous systems. Sure, perhaps the $100 notebook won't use firewire, PCMCIA and a slew of other features, but these features are NOT fat for a full featured laptop.
They also say they will market the laptop in large quantities, like millions. What does Dell do? HP, Compaq, etc? Most PC's are marketed in the millions and we don't see significant discounts on those products? Because the laptop is aimed for poor kids around the world component makers are going to significantly discount their products?
Also, the whole hand generator concept is also garbage. Ever use one of those hand generator radio/flashlight combinations? It takes a lot of effort to get a charge built up. It's not as easy to turn these things as you would think, the gearing makes it stiff in order to get enough magnetic spin to affect the battery. Sure, a radio can last a few hours on a charge, but turn on the flash light and your down to less then 1 hour. A laptop, and I don't care what they make it out of, is going to consume way more power then a radio/flashlight, some poor kid is going to wear their arms off churning this thing long enough to make it useable.
Lastely, where the heck are they going to get Internet access? Many places don't have electricity, let alone phone or internet connectivity? What software is going to run on it? Who is going to make the Swahili version of Linux and OpenOffice?
This whole thing is also based on the premise that poor kids around the world NEED INTERNET ACCESS? I mean, come off it. This is the kind of tripe that University students gobble up. They want to make the world a better place because they haven't had a taste of reality yet, not in the protected cocoons that university and college are. Kids around the world need MEDICINE, FOOD, and FRESH DRINKING water before they need the Internet. Also, there is this assumption that kids around the world need to be highly educated. You can't apply Western society principles to 3rd world problems. Here, you can't make it without a degree or high school education, you can't get a job, and if you can't work you can't afford the high cost of our society. You can't buy land cheaply here and even live off it and become self sufficient without money. There, its a simpler life. The cost of living is very inexpensive and those societies are not career oriented and materialistic. They can live off the land (if its not famine or drought stricken) and can find jobs labouring or other simpler jobs that don't require high education. The only problem is that Western corporations are exploiting these people and imposing Western philosophy in those regions, so many are becoming career oriented and materialistic. Western society is creating an environment of poverty in 3rd world countries by trying to improve the quality of life, which simply drives up the cost of living making it more difficult to live in these areas. There is nothing wrong with not being able to read or understand math or physics, as long as your happy, well fed and contribute to society, which is how
Perhaps if the RIAA keeps sending people to court, this may eventually bankrupt them.
I am sure any lawyer would love to go head to head against the RIAA, considering how lackadaisical the evidence is against these people, I am sure many of these cases will be thrown out of court.
I would counter-sue the RIAA to recouperate legal fees wasted in defending myself in court, which I would probably win because of the lame suit against me.
In the end, considering the average court cost is about 10,000 - 20,000, the RIAA could loose up to a quarter of a billion dollars going after these people. Tie in civil suits against and if you could play off damages or anguish charges, this amount could skyrocket!
Then, if I were a music artist, I would wonder why I would allow a association that would waste more then a quarter of a billion dollars to alienate my fans to act on my "best" interests. I would then tell my music publisher that if they don't pull out of the RIAA then I would go independent and market and sell my own music, or publish my music in another country.
In any regard, the RIAA should sue away, it will be their undoing and I support it whole heartedly.
The stream of drivel coming out of Hollywood these days is considered art by Ebert?
Don't ask a 90 year old if they think video games are art.
Art is simply the creation of something, and while it is debatable what that thing is, art is anything that CAN be created.
I question when I go to an art gallery and see a canvas of all black paint that cost $1.2 million to purchase as "art", but it WAS created and to some people it is art.
There is definitely lots of artistry in games. From the artists the create the environment to the programmers that can spin code to allow the art to come to life, games are all about creation and imagination.
Ultimatly, I feel that art is taking a dream and making it reality. Whether thats putting paint on canvas, or assembling 1's and 0's together to create video game, one without imagination like Ebert, who can only comment and criticize on the creativity of others, should not be a judge for what art truely is.
Why not make cars that don't crash and planes that don't fall out of the sky. I mean, why can't engineers simply build better cars and planes.
Software isn't simple, period. Patching software, especially in a large and mature product could introduce undesirable results or stability issues, or further security holes.
Patches are not just about writing up a few lines of code and adding it to the pile, the patching process needs to ensure that changes to an existing system doesn't affect other systems and features.
Also, don't say company X patches quicker or is able to do things better. Company X may have a smaller code base, newer code base that is easier to handle, or simply doesn't focus on preventing instability or incompatibility by introducing patches as much as Microsoft does. For instance, Apple often introduces incompatibilty and other annoying issues after releasing a patch that eventually need to be fixed as well. I would prefer a company to issue a patch that doesn't force me to patch again because they broke something, rather then one offering a knee-jerk upgrade ASAP. Few other company have a finger in 98% of computer users and the kind of scrutiny MS goes through, so few feel the pressure that MS does to release patches timely as well as ensuring stability.
I am not defending MS for having products that require so much patching. Obviously there are fundamental flaws in their code base that allows it to be exploited so easily. Systems like Unix and its derivatives were inherently secure from the ground up, they were always intended as networking OS'es. Windows was not. Networking in Windows was an afterthought.
Anyways, to whine and say that MS should fix patches faster just eludes to people's ignorance about how software development works. I don't think MS is holding back patches just to annoy and frustrate people or that they are not concerned about security like what so many zombie anti-Microsoft pundits suggest. Microsoft is releasing patches as soon as they can fix the problem while not introducing new ones, just that their system is so flawed that it takes a large team and a lot of time to do that.
First, I have grown accustomed to ignoring online ads. I have NEVER clicked on an ad, and by extension bought something from a web site in that manner.
I have also dabbled with creating a website using ads and can safely say I am not making any of that $12 billion. Again, few people click thru an ad and buy a product. In fact, browsers like Firefox ship with the default setting for cookies to delete them after exit from the app, or at least this option is available. This means that many websites using cookies to track performance of ad clicking won't work for a lot of users.
Also, their is more public outrage about online advertising and many products are being offered to combat this pervasive nuisance. Pop-up and ad blockers are being integrated into even Internet Explorer and those savvy enough are using Firefox which handle them better. I use Norton Internet Security with the ad blocking enabled. Anyone with Linux skills can setup a proxy server that will only serve context stripped of advertising. Obviously, there is a big market for people wanting to avoid online advertising.
Who is saying online advertising is working, Google that gets paid to put ads up regardless of whether they actually generate sales, or the people advertising reporting that ads are actually drawing people to their websites (directly) and making purchases (directly).
In my opinion, online ads are becoming ineffective as people strive to ignore or block them.
Ah, the age old programming question
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How to Write Comments
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· Score: 1, Insightful
Pretty much my philosophy is to comment any section of code that IS NOT OBVIOUS what it's intent is.
I mean, any reasonably skilled programmer should be able to look at a block of code and understand what is going on without an excessive description of what the original programmer intended to do. But there are always those cases, especially if the original programmer got crafty and found ways to streamline or optimize the code for performance, where anybody not involved in the original development would just scratch their head and wonder what the heck is going on.
Comments can be very detrimental in many cases. If I get some code that is heavily commented, to the point where the actual code is separated by long blocks of commented code, I just nuke the comments and condense the file. I have actually found files that are thousands of lines long be reduced to only a few hundred lines be removing superfluous comments, and the actual code is easier to understand without the unecessary comments.
NOBODY should ever write a comment like//Loading X with the value 5 int x = 5; I mean, this is a very obvious and exagerated case, but often this happens. It is very obvious what the code is doing, anyone with at least 1 day of programming lessons can understand it easily.
Usually, its more like//Initialize Y to be false bool y = false;
Why should y be initialized to false. I many cases, false is just an arbritrary initial value, but in some cases, the initial condition is important, this importance should be commented and highlighted.
For the most part, comments end up being inaccurate.//Initialize Z to 10.2 because it is important double Z = 6.1;
So what do you do here? If your reviewing the code, is 10.2 still the important value, or has a bug been fixed by changing the inital value to 6.1. Is a bug occuring because Z is not 10.2?
As a programmer, one should never blindly read the comments and not review the code. Learning to understand the code makes more sense then deciphering the comments. In most cases, the comments are either superfluous, meaningless, or just wrong. The best skill a programmer can learn is to ignore comments and read the code.
Ultimatly, I comment a block of code to give a general sense of what I am trying to do. I don't go into particulars within a section such as why I am deleting a pointer or loading a value (it should be obvioius what your doing), its the end result that is important, not all the minutia involved in getting there.
Also, I CAN'T stand notation that lists the history of file changes. I mean, the CURRENT code is what your interested in, not what someone did 6 years ago. Knowing that person X modified Line Y in 1992 is of no benefit to my ability to read, understand, fix, or update code in 2005. Often, these modifications refer to code changes that no longer exist in the file. Someone made a fix to code in 2001, but someone in 2003 rewrote the whole code, the 2001 fix is irrelavent. Serious programmers invest in a source control product, like Visual Source Safe, CVS, or SubVersion. These programs STORE the history of a file, there is no need to write a header that can be hundreds of lines long telling you about all the bug fixes and file changes. If you need to review old code, simply go into your source control and compare the file between 2005 and 1992 to find out what is different and changed. Often, most of the people involved in the file's history no longer work at the company.
Lastely, one of the MOST important commenting tricks is to insert nothing at all! A blank line can speak volumes. It can separate functional sections in code, allowing you to understand the flow of the code and realize when certain results are accomplished. I am an object oriented programmer, so seeing blocks of functional units where a blank line separates some operation or result just makes sense (even more if you turn the code section into a class
I could never understand the mentality that some books are made for girls and others for boys, especially once they hit the teen years. I can see as children pink based books for girls and blue for boys, ones about dolls, the other about cars, but later in life, books need to stop having a gender associated with it.
I guess teenage girls are more interested in stories about relationships, or positive female roll models, but if you know a girl that loves science-fiction, getting one aimed at girls is probably an insult. I am sure there are those authors that cater to the idea that girls want stories about relationships, so fit that in some guise as a SF novel, but in general, I think any SF should appeal to someone interested in the genre.
I guess it is difficult to find books not written in the male dominated genres like SF, which may focus more on male characters rather then being a little less sexist. But then, isn't it sexist to believe that girls need to be pandered too by only letting them read books by female authors or about female heroines.
I think you have given them a good start of some of the many essential classics that any SF fan should read, a few more then I have read for that matter, but to cater to some tired myth that girls are only interested in girly stuff might insult your neices. If they don't like the books you have been giving them, then the may not be interested in SF as much as you think.
Having said that, one suggestion not mentioned in your list is the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan, and while he has essentially written a soap opera with now 11 books in the series, the first 6 are very well written and offer a good balance of male and female characters that should appeal to girls. This is more Fantasy then SF, but you did mentioned books by Tolkein and Ann McAffrey and such which are being lumped into the SF genre wrongfully. Terry Goodkind and his Sword of Truth series is also good, as is Melanie Rawn and Sunrunner's series.
The first video game crash happened because there was only one dominant player in the market, Atari. Its game console was slow to advance, and so developers were forced to release new games that featured the same stale graphics and ideas as games from 5 years ealier. Despite there being other players in the market like ColecoVision and Intellivision, Atari was the dominant force and when sales of Atari units and games dropped the market bottomed out.
Now with 3 dominant players in the market, I wouldn't be so quick to believe or propose that the video game market will bottom out like it did back then.
True, there is a trend to release the "same old games" with new eye candy, as with Quack 4 and and Doom3, the whole industry has been wrapped in the idea that customers are hungry for the next major evolution in 3D graphics, even if its the SAME GAME over and over again. Some offer us better sequels, but many simply offer us the same game in a new package.
But, what the Inquirer article fails to realize is the variety of games out there that will keep the industry a float even if the customer base revolts against sequels.
First, there is a large nostalgia market that has built up over the years. From proprietary game controlers that come with x number of built in classics, to collections being released for new game consoles and on PC, there is a strong market for people looking to go back to a time when games were played that were simple, addictive and one learned to play them by instinct rather then thought.
Second, the mobile sector is striving to offer ubiquitous gaming, on PDA's and cellphones. While not as profitable as game console sales, this is a strong market segment where people like to play the same old puzzle and platform jumpers that have kept them occupied for years. Throw in the PSP's and Gameboy's that revamp games from a generation or two behind the big consoles and you will always find a market of consumers looking for something to occupy their time. Back in the days of Atari, the only electronic mobile games were a few LED's on a static surface.
Thirdly, innovation is still strong in the game industry, Nintendo can attest to that. Between the DS and the upcoming Revolution, Nintendo won't allow the game market to stagnate into a series of cloned sequels. Even though they are now up to Mario Something X, by offering novel (or even gimmicky) game play like dual screens, touch screens, or motion sensors, they can still bank there will be a market willing to eat up these sequels simply because they are offered in a novel form factor (i.e. kids). It might be more rare, but many other companies offer new and innovative games, people just have to live on the wild side and give these titles a try rather then only buying the Quack, Doom, Halflife sequels.
Fourthly, the graphics card market still isn't finished giving us new and improved technology. As long as there are some substantial improvements in game graphics, people will be curious and excited about new games that offer state-of-the-art graphics technology. Game sales will be strong until they hit the photorealistic level of quality, where you can play a game with CG as good looking as what they do in movies. People will want to buy new games simply because they still are avid about buying new graphics hardware. There is also upcoming physics hardware add-ons that will allow for improved realism in terms of offloading complex physics onto a dedicated chip. These games will offer us unprecidented gameplay as they strive to incorporate more advanced physics and realistic interaction within virtual worlds. There will be a big consumer drive to find and play games incorporating this new technology.
Finally, there are still strong sales for repeat visits to old favourites. People are eagerly anticipating a sequel to Duke Nukem and Wolfenstein. Civilization 4 just topped the best sellers list, and I am sure any new Sims sequel will have strong sales along with their plethora of Sims add-ons.
If your a serious programmer, learn how to manage your own memory.
With the exception of C++, most other development languages are intended for rapid application development senarios. Typically people involved in this level of development are not native programmers, but people from other career paths that got into programming out of necessity for the job rather then a real desire to develop software for a living.
I am NOT saying that these people are not skilled in what they do, just that programming wasn't their first love or forte. They haven't spent years learning the ins and outs of software development, or have worked years honing their skills.
Memory management is one of those things that requires discipline. You need to do things in a specific way, and if you don't, you leak memory and cause program/OS instability. Only after years of dedicated programming does one learn how to write code that does not cause memory leaks (and even then it can easily trip you up), you learn the skills and tricks to control the allocation and deallocation of memory.
People using RAD tools or languages with garbage collection are focused on the end product rather then skilled design. The limitations of disciplined programming eat into their ability to get the job down quickly and efficiently, they didn't spend years learning to program, they need to get the job done in a few weeks or months. Garbage collection in these RAD tools means they don't have to worry about highly disciplined programming.
From what I have seen, ANY language with garbage collection is typically NOT used for high performance applications. They are used for web or database front ends, intended to be a UI layer between data and the user. I have never seen a Visual Basic, Java, or C# language used for scientific calculations (nothing serious that is), or high performance software where speed is a concern.
In any regard, if all you ever intend to do is to make UI front ends for web services or databases, then any language with garbage collections will suit you fine, you don't have to worry about the finer points of developing software and can simply focus on the final product rather then the details on how to get there. The extra overhead garbage collections imposes on these higher level languages will not be noticed or undesirable in the final product.
But, if there is a chance you may need to develop a high performance application, or if you think you may be developing in C++ or another non-managed language, learning how to effectively allocate and deallocate memory is an invaluable skill to learn.
Apple will get this wrong on the first try. They have been slow to get into the HTPC market (do mac's even support 5.1 surround sound?) and Steve Jobs has said that PC/TV connectivity is a fad that will never last.
He also said that more then one button on a mouse is superfluous, and he renegged.
He also said video on a MP3 player would never take off, and he renegged.
So, chances are, despite Stevie saying that PC/TV connectivity is a fad, its probably that he just feels nobody has "done it right" yet, and will come out with Apple's version of the PVR in the near future.
What will really happen is that they will simply tie in iTunes Music Store more intergrated with the Mac Mini and market it as an iTunes media appliance. The "PVR" feature will simply be buying and downloading television shows from the music store. Apple will say they innovated the On-Demand PVR.
It would not make sense for Apple to suddenly allow their customers to record and playback television from cable when they went to great lengths to form a partnership with ABC to sell television shows for iPod usage. I am sure ABC would not like it if Apple customers could suddenly simply record episodes of Lost and burn their own DVD's as opposed to paying for the episode.
But, in the end, this may be one of those unfounded Apple rumours. Someone may have got a tidbit of information about the features that might appear in the Mac Mini, and blew it out of proportion. In any regards, Apple is now about 3 years behind in terms of HTPC and I doubt they will get it right on the first try because the company seems to be at odds as to how these things should work.
Sorry, but even a 300gb holographic disk, as cool as it sounds, is too little, too late, especially with a 20mb/s transfer rate. This would take 40+ hours to backup a typical desktop hard drive, this is NOT exceptional by any measure of the word.
Simply put, tape and physcial media backup is a dead concept. With the fact that most common desktop drives exceed the storage capacity of a tape backup, and the fact that it is dirt cheap to get a 200gb+ hard drive, the 'new' way to backup is to setup an offsite SAN and stream your data over the internet.
With the cheapness of hard drives, it is easy to setup terrabyte RAID systems, completely with stripe sets, mirroring, and redundancy to create a robust and efficient "live" backup system, have your data uploaded during off peak times, or even in the middle of the day. As long as someone keeps an eye on the fitness of the drives in your system, there is no reason to perform physical backups to static media.
This announcement comes about 5 years too late. And while there may be some applications of this technology, I think it will fail to catch on and simply become one of those technologies that has been leaped frogged before it even hits the shelves.
It makes no sense except to fill a Hollywood plot that alien's would be evil, malevolent creatures bent on distruction or take over of our planet.
First of all, this idea suggests that there is already a very advanced race of alien's out their that have grown tired of exploration and research and just bent on harvesting resources from other worlds or simply bored and looking to destroy as many worlds as possible.
From what we have been made aware of, through Seti and astro physics is that life on other planets so far is unique to only our own, and even if there is life on other plants, it is extremely rare.
Why then would an alien race even consider the destruction of another planet? I think any significantly advanced race of aliens capable of interstellar travel would enjoy meeting another race and working in cooperation to help both of us improve our view of the rarity of life in our universe.
It would be far different if we have ample and obvious proof that life existed on other planets. If we could hear alien signals, or could easily assertain that life widely existed in other solar systems then I would be fearful. Like in any culture or species on Earth, once land or resources run out, it is typical for the dominant species to aggresively seek out more space or more resources. I could then very easily see an alien race, filling their homeworld to maximum population and straining their supply of essential resources, striking out and taking over another world out of despiration.
This isn't the case. As far as we can tell, we are singular in the universe, but even if not the case, there is no suggestion that an alien world would seek out to destroy us.
Secondly, the idea that aliens could simply write a computer virus that would take out our technology is ludicrous. How would they have any understanding of our computer technology to write an effective virus? Viruses work because they emulate software and are executable by computers. Alien's couldn't just write any software, they would have to know how our programs work in order to make an effective virus. If order to do that, they would either already have to be on our planet, or near enough to capture wireless transmissions. If that were the case, then there are easier ways to sabotage or destroy our population then sending a virus to take down our internet.
Ideas of beaming viruii to destroy our technology and Internet are just crazy Hollywood ideas. Its not even an original plot, any "scientist" claiming that this is a serious issue isn't worth his weight in popcorn.
Had it on my Maxtor for the last 3 months. Way to catch up with the times.
But in general, most hard drives are still severely underperforming, regardless of their specs on paper. Its the single biggest bottleneck on today's systems, causing system hangs and stutters on even the fastest systems.
This industry needs a kick in the ass!
300mb/s transfer rate on a system capable of procssing 8GB of data per second, that is nothing to rave about. Also, most systems still work off the principle that you can only read or write one operation at a time. Sure caches offer speed improvements, but there is no reason why a hard drive can't have multiple read/write heads to access different sectors of the disk as the same time, turn a SINGLE drive into a STRIPE set. It can be done if you put your mind to it.
In order to get decent performance out of hard drives today, you have to buy 3 or more drives and setup a RAID 5 system and waste one drive for redundancy. But of course, the hard drive makers want you to do this, buying 3 drives instead of 1 to get decent performance is their goal, I am sure.
The problem is, hard drives have reached a point where they are cheap commodities. The leaders in this field have long since figured out how to make cheap and reliable drives while increasing storage space proprotionally to a reduction of price. Prices for hard drives keep getting cheap, and hard drive makers are not making that much money off them anymore.
This is why the whole external hard drive fad has started up, taking a $50/unit hard drive, stuffing it into a $25/unit external enclousure, and charging $300 retail for it. Add a back up button and maybe a USB port on the front and you suddenly create a "Must Have" product.
Because of this, there is no motivation to improve the technology. They figured out a few years ago how to dramatically increase storage space breaking what they preceived to be a physical barrier, and since then hard drive storage capacities double every year. With the ability to stack bits on top of each other, we will hit terrabyte storage capacities next year easily. But they are using the SAME TECHNOLOGY, the same magnetic media, read/write heads, packaging, I/O boards and chips, cache, etc, etc, etc. They may tweak these componenets to work with higher capacities, or improve performance somewhat, but nothing has really changes in terms of how hard drives are manufactured and designed. Compare this with the CPU industry that re-invents itself every 18-24 months.
Where are solid state hard drives? Where is my obscenely fast gamer performance extreme drive capable of feeding data to my video card in real time? Where is my tiny thumb sized drive capable of storing terrabytes of data?
The hard drive industry is just dolling out minor improvements and tweaks to existing technology, and expecting to be slapped on the back every time they boost storage capacity by a third or transfer rates by a quarter. Something seriously needs to happen in this industry to make hard drives hot technology again, its grown quite stale and cold over the last 10 years. Until then, I am underwhelmed with these kinds of press releases. Way to go Western Digital, your doing what EVERYONE else in the hard drive industry is doing! Sucking!
If they are going one about the whole "Remote Controller" concept, it will be a gimmick. Widely used in Nintendo's popular titles like Mario Party or Metroid, many third party developers will come out with a few novel games, but as long as other game consoles and the PC market use "traditional" gamepads, it will not be revolutionary.
I am not dissing the Revolution's RC, I think it will be fun if done right and depending on how well they integrate the add-on components, it could become a major selling feature of the Revolution. It could also become their crutch if ALL games for the Revolution must make use of this novel gimmick. But will it change game controllers forever? No.
Asside from that, there is nothing truely revolutionary about the Revolution. Sure, Nintendo will make their back library available for play on the new system, again a gimmick that will drive sales in the first year or so, but I bet Nintendo will opt for a subscription based service that people will grow tired of paying some $X amount of money a month to play games they already owned. Also, this concept isn't even NEW. PS2 could play its entire back library, and the new Xbox360 offers an arcade marketplace for downloading and playing old game favourites from arcades and PC shareware.
For size, I bet the Revolution will be the smallest again, but traditionally Nintendo isn't big on "slick" designs, and usually the end result looks more like a Fisher Price product. I expect that we won't see the slim silver/white wedge that their PR department has been coming out with. It will probably be made out of cheap plastic with handles and other superfluous design elements that aim more for the young gamer market.
From that point forward, your really talking about a game console with the same specs as each of the new game systems, albiet a little anemic compared to the PS3 or Xbox360, as was the Gamecube in its generation. I do agree that Nintendo's focus on "Games First" is beneficial, I really don't care about DVD/music playback on my game console, and those features have NEVER been used on my PS2. Focusing on games rather then state of the art DVD formats should be the focus of any game hardware, and I will welcome Nintendo's much cheaper price compared to the all-in-wonders Xbox360 and PS3. How many games out there in all honesty require 20 to 50 GB of data storage. NOT ONE, PERIOD.
So, will Nintendo evolve the game industry? Considering they have played catchup for the last 10 years, I doubt it. Nintendo may be able to create a breakout success with the Revolution after the lackluster "success" of the Gamecube, but one thing Nintendo NEEDS TO PAY ATTENTION TO, the gamer market is now longer composed of people 15 and under. Nintendo really needs to start focusing on adult gamers, like the Xbox and Playstation do, and as long as they keep insisting on cheap gimmicks and revamps of Mario Party and Pokemon products, they will never start a Revolution in this industry.
Its public ignorance responsible for the widespread propagation of mosquitoes. Even surrounding a city with some form of mosquito net will not help matters.
People leaving stagnant water in their yards, whether its a bird bath or old tire sitting in the corner is where mosquitoes breed. The city sewers and various waterways also contribute to the problem.
I.e. there is little to nothing you can do short of poisoning the environment to get rid of mosquitoes.
The city would be better of issuing public education programs on how to prevent an infestation of mosquitoes in their own backyard rather then wasting money on those "magnets".
Its like trying to heat the outdoors with a candle. Yes, in theory it should work, but there is just so much air to heat then what the candle can handle, and with these magnets, they just don't work, period. They may collect a lot of bugs, but there are billions more where they came from.
From ticket agents to bank tellers, many are adopting slick UI and flat panel LCD's in place of large black and green CRT terminals with old legacy applications running on them.
The biggest mistake being made is to force those users to require using a mouse instead of preserving the quick key input from the previous software.
In many cases, a mouse just doesn't make sense to use. Often the area these terminals were original installed lack the space to place a mouse effectively, forcing employees to adopt comprimises to use the mouse ( I have seen one person use a square of cardboard on her lap because there was not "desktop" space for a mouse ).
Also, I have seen bank teller more slowely get access to data simply because they are trying to use a mouse to navigate, wheras they used to hit a few keys and type in your account number. Many people are now squinting and trying to find the right box to put the account number into.
While there are great advantages to having a rich UI for form input, such as the ability to handle multiple screens using tabs, or even be able to handle multiple customers at once (i.e. easily put the other customer's form on hold while you work with another), most software vendors making these solutions are underestimating the power of quick keyboard shortcuts, instead relying on often the built in Windows shortcuts for cutting and pasting or tabbing between controls.
Any form based legacy application should be replaced with a modern day GUI app that keeps the keyboard shortcuts intact, in fact, these apps SHOULD be developed WITHOUT mouse support, period. A few new keyboard shortcuts may be needed to switch between active on screen forms, but once in a form window, the keyboard should be used exclusively.
A small part of this is the fact you can't teach an old dog new tricks, some people are just adverse to change, and regardless of how much training or experience, they refuse to integrate the new methodology into their being. Thus they will always find using the new system cumbersome and frustrating. But a bigger part of this problem is that software vendors are quickly rolling out rich GUI appliations without one consideration for how the previous system worked.
A mouse works great on in a desktop office environment where your not required to quickly process customers. A mouse IS slow data input, period. Effectively figuring out keyboard shortcuts will increase your productivity greatly. The time it takes to pick up a mouse, move it, coordinate it with a GUI element, click on the mouse and move your hands back to the keyboard for data input is no where near as fast as the almost instinctive, muscle memory like sweep of fingers over a keyboard combo to do the same operation.
That last full revamp of my computer I did was about 3 years ago and I am itching to get a new system. But looking at ALL the processor choices as well as video cards and motherboards can be a little staggering.
The bottom line is, don't worry too much about price, and start to focus on particular brands.
If your last computer ran smoothly for a number of years, then stick with the brands you are familiar with. They probably won't fail you again with your new computer.
Sure, some other brand might offer a super deal on a seemingly sweet piece of hardware, but generally the cheaper the component and the more off-mainstream the company, the worse the product is. Why risk buying something that claims better features for less money when you are familiar with a brand that offered you years of quality.
So, once you decide what brands you like and find reliable, then decide what CPU you want.
I recommmend AMD, period. Any 939pin Athlon 64 will give you ample performance in an easy to afford package with an upgrade path that should last a few more years. Don't worry about the dual cores, they are new, underperforming and still a novelty for desktop workstations. See TomsHardware.com ultimate CPU guide to realize just how underwhelming the dual cores are.
Next time to get a motherboard that suits your needs, it may be trying, but weeding out first those motherboards with dual or quad SLI solutions or can connect to 16+ hard drives with RAID X is a good way to weed out wasting money on features your never going to use. You will find that whatever brand your looking at usually has a few good and reasonably priced motherboards that don't have superflous bells and whistels. Asus is still a top notch motherboard maker and offer both premium and price conscious models.
For video cards, nVidia, period. ATI still can't make good drivers, I upgraded to a mid-range x700 for sh*ts and giggles after using an nVidia Geforce 4400ti for years and found my system suddenly unstable, crash prone, and underperforming. Most games I played with the new card was only about 10% faster then the nVidia card that was 2 generations behind. I quickly returned the ATI card, and I won't look back. Again, don't get caught up in the hype surrounding different brands of products, if you find a product that works well for you, and offers years of stable performance, the keep with that brand.
From there, your talking about ram and hard drives, any will do really. If your going for a high performance system, then you might care what the timings are on RAM, but for general systems where price is a concern, any Generic ram that fits in your motherboard will work, there are only a few makers of the actual chips that go on RAM anyways. Same with a hard drive, maxtor, seagate, western digital, may will tell you tale of horror about one or the other, but hard drives have become commodities that are easy to make and generally more reliable as the years go on.
The bottom line is, don't fear the industry. It is easy to fall behind and loose perspective on what is the latest and the greatest, but reading any hardware site like anandtech.com or tomshardware.com will quickly get you up-to-date on which products are hot and which are not and you will get a better idea of what to upgrade to if you spend a little time reading some review sites.
Lastely, if it still seems too daunting, get a Dell. Don't laugh, but after a certain age you don't care about finding the right component X to fit with component Y, getting a preconfigured PC means your going to get a decent system with the support and warranty that makes it a brainless decision in a box that arrives are your doorstep.
Steam was a good delivery system for HL2, despite having its first day jitters, but as a general eCommerce tool, it leaves little to be desired for.
After buying HL2 last year, I decided to buy another game through Steam, Ragdoll Kung-fu, the experience left me never wanting to buy from them again.
I preordered the game and on the day of release a message told me my credit card could not be authenticated. Thinking I might have just mis-typed my address or phone number or credit card number I went to reorder the game and found out I couldn't get it for the discounted pre-release price. I mean, ordering a pre-release is like reserving a copy, if your credit card failed to authenticate, you should be given a chance to rectify the situation and still get the discounted price.
It was only $2 off, so no big deal, the real problem is that when I ensured I entere correct credit card information, they said that my credit card could not be used with my account because it has been "used too many times"??!! I mean, I only used to twice, once to get HL2 and a failed attempt to get the new game. The message was cryptic and wrong.
Contacting customer support I found out they really didn't want to do anything, they told me I should use a different credit card and try again. Get real, I am not going to apply for a new credit card to buy a $14.95 shareware game from Steam. Steam implements some rediculous anti-fraud scheme, if they don't want your money, I refuse to give them any.
Valve should stick with developing games because they can't develop an eCommerce solution to save their lives.
The reception of Quack 4 after years of hype has been lack luster, a minor update to an exhausted game franchise.
It's not so much that sequels are bad, its just when people don't innovate new ideas and revamp franchises is when I get a little ticked off with the same old rehash of an existing game.
Over the last decade, most companies have strived to make graphics updates to their popular games, and for a while, customers loved each new revision that offered slicker 3D graphics. But now, 3D graphics are not improving as quickly as they did 10 years ago, so a new better looking Quake 4, with the same game play and themes is kind of a waste of time and effort, and the consumers believe its a waste of money as well.
It you IMPROVE upon the original, then you have a valid case for making a sequel, but if your just upgrading the graphics engine, you have failed, period.
At least with HL2, they introduced physics puzzles and a more cinematic game plot along with fancy new graphics. HL2 was a game to experience as well as watch.
Its no wonder that John Carmack, the guy behind Quack and Doom, felt that adding gameplay features like physics is meaningless compared to improving graphics quality. Doom3 and Quack4 have been dismal failures despite improved graphics. They are not capturing a new audience and are even losing those that still remember the day they first played Doom in a dark dorm room.
Like Star Wars Episode 3, sequels without substance can leave a bad taste in your mouth, and consumers are starting to throw up over them.
I mean, unless this kind of performance is built into a camera, video or music player then who cares that it takes 20 seconds less time to transfer a few hundred megs of file to a flash drive. I have never found myself wishing my thumb drive was faster for transfering content.
Also, probably a big also, most systems hard drives significantly underperform, so are you even going to get that much improvement by a faster USB drive? No matter what I have done, I have never gotten sustained 48MB/s transfer from any IDE hard drive.
Well, if your a performance queen, then I guess you need the fastest and bestest, but its kind of wasted R&D to make a USB drive smoking fast. How about putting them skills into making desktop hard drives smoking fast instead of smoking hot and underperforming.
The game development field is probably the hardest field to get into, and enjoy it. You have to have both strong programming skills AND a creative edge over the millions of people that want to design games for a living.
No college degree is going to give you that.
Game companies are looking for people that don't learn how to design games from a book or from a degree, they want those people that started designing games on an old TRS-80 in basic at the age of 6, text adventures and stick graphics. They want people that started early in life learning the nuts and bolts of game design by ACTUALLY making their own games, spending hours and even days hobby building games from scratch, learning the basiscs without any other outside influence, except perhaps to play their favourite games over and over again to gleen some tidbit of knowledge into how that game was made and how they could dupliate or improve upon it.
I.e. they want people with passion about making video games, not just those that think it would be a cool job.
For those people, those that get a degree in "Game Design", or those looking to enter the game industry just because they think its cool or will get them rich, there are LOTS of menial programming jobs in the game industry for those kinds of people. And from what I have heard, these are not the kinds of jobs people want for a career. Some may be able to move on and actually get into the main development team, most drop out and get a job in some other industry. These kinds of jobs are troubleshooting and game testing or meanial game programming (i.e. your told exactly what to develop, you can't impart any creativity or originality in the code, only develop by spec).
Colleges that claim to be able to give you an edge over the competition and get into game design are simply banking off the fact that people today don't believe you can get rich quick, but if you take a 6 month diploma course then you have "earned" your right to get rich. Devry has made a mint telling people that their 6 month IT program will get you that high paying 80K a year job in a server room. Everyone knows education is important, but few realize that these 6 or 12 month crash-courses in the buzz technology/field of the day seldom impart enough practical knowledge that the industry you want to get into will look at.
In any regards, if your looking to get into the game industry, and never at least sat down and thought about how to design a game or actualy write your own game software, forget about it. There are going to be at least a few dozen or so applicants for any job you apply for that spend thousands of hours pouring over Quake's source code and writing their own version, or spent weeks moding half-life because they are actually passionate about game design, they just don't think its a cool job, but its their life.
Looking at an entirely wrong product. But yes, the Porche designed products by LaCie are underwelming to look at, and when you pick them up, they are cheaply made too. What do you expect from a guy that designs toasters and keychains.
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NOTHING, no government or social policy can affect the quality of life for a child if the parent(s) involved are not willing to participate in the child's life. You can't even make a law stating who and who should not be allowed to procreate. First, as for video games and developmental health, I owe my quick reflexes and good hand eye coordination to video games. I have saved my life, and the lives of others using quick wits and reflexes by avoiding an accident in a car, two concepts that video games help develop in children. The twitchy and fast gameplay that most games offer help to improve these skills, which could otherwise never be developed except playing a few types of sports. Sports are less available to children then video games, especially those that require expensive equipement or an unwilling parent to drive them to and from. I will agree that those children playing too much video games, or too much TV for that matter, could have health problems from lack of excersize and fresh air, but then, that is a parental issue, not one that a society should debate or develop laws about. Again, nothing will impact a child's heath except the impact of the parent on that child. As for violence and mental development, I will agree that there are some games that children should never play, and I question the reason for their existence even for adult sences. Again, parents should be more pro-active in observing their children and either not-allowing them to play violent games, or to recognize when a child is developing abhorrent from playing them. Many children develop and mature quicker then others, a general age policy is never approprite, only parental discression is advisable. If ANY social policy needs to be made it is one where parents should have easy access to information teaching them how to become more effective parents. They shouldn't have to run out and buy Dr. Phil books or videos, the governement should be able to offer free programs and literature that can help a parent deal with a kid that doesn't want to go out an play, at least help the parents grow a brass pair to be able to handle a beligerent childen that won't listen to them when they say enough video games is enough. Wasting time and money debating policy about video games is just that, a waste of time and money. The US in particular is so fearful of social programs, its considered Un-American for the government to step in an educate the population into how to be better parents, yet it is very american to create meaningless laws that prevent a child from buying a mature rated video game. Kids are going to get that game for their birthday or for Christmas because their parents will get it for them without even considering reading the warning label. I am tired of hearing this debate, and hearing about parents wanting to sue the gaming industry because their fat kid has heart problems because of inactivity caused by long and excessive video game play. Parents need to accept their right and responsibilities to raise their kids properly, not use video games and its industry as a scapegoat for bad parenting.
Direct X has been a PC API all along, I didn't even think XBOX games were based on it, or at least, some offshoot from it different then the PC API. As for Microsoft changing Direct X on nVidia, well, MS could do what it wants, Direct X ISN'T an industry standard, its an MS standard. Neither is OpenGL an industry standard, but OpenGL is a cross platform API which ATI and nVidia could make more robust by optimizing their drivers for it, if they wanted to. Has the XBOX really impacted PC gaming? Well, considering that the most innovative and technically advanced games are released for the PC first, I don't think so. Quake, Half-life are two rendering engines that have been ported over to XBOX games. There is so much porting of PC games to game consoles, I would suggest that the only reason why game consoles exist today is because of PC gaming. Lastely, as long as PC technology evolves and improves every 6 - 8 months while game consoles remain static for 5 - 6 years at a time, I can't say the XBOX has had any impact on PC gaming. The Xbox360 may be revolutionary today, but give it 3 - 6 months and nVidia/ATI will release a video card that outperforms the 360 by a factor of 2, followed by one a year from now by a factor of 4, etc, etc, etc until the Xbox720 or whatever.
Sorry, I don't believe for a second someone can make a $100 laptop, except in some university geek's pipedream.
Not to say that we don't need cheap access to technology, just that this industry isn't going to make it happen.
Look, most toys with built-in LCD screen cost more then $100, and they have far less features and spec's then what the MIT group. I have yet to see a portable DVD player under $100 worth is weight in salt.
They say that current notebooks are fat, they are going to cut out this excess to make it cheaper. MIT says that most notebooks has features to manage other features that are not needed? Nice marketing spin, but completely meaningless. Business partners are going to gobble up that line, but in reality, any notebook maker is always looking for ways to trim the fat, to ensure that the notebooks are LIGHT, use LESS POWER, so they can RUN LONGER on a battery. Today's notebooks are streamlined and don't contained redundant or superfluous systems. Sure, perhaps the $100 notebook won't use firewire, PCMCIA and a slew of other features, but these features are NOT fat for a full featured laptop.
They also say they will market the laptop in large quantities, like millions. What does Dell do? HP, Compaq, etc? Most PC's are marketed in the millions and we don't see significant discounts on those products? Because the laptop is aimed for poor kids around the world component makers are going to significantly discount their products?
Also, the whole hand generator concept is also garbage. Ever use one of those hand generator radio/flashlight combinations? It takes a lot of effort to get a charge built up. It's not as easy to turn these things as you would think, the gearing makes it stiff in order to get enough magnetic spin to affect the battery. Sure, a radio can last a few hours on a charge, but turn on the flash light and your down to less then 1 hour. A laptop, and I don't care what they make it out of, is going to consume way more power then a radio/flashlight, some poor kid is going to wear their arms off churning this thing long enough to make it useable.
Lastely, where the heck are they going to get Internet access? Many places don't have electricity, let alone phone or internet connectivity? What software is going to run on it? Who is going to make the Swahili version of Linux and OpenOffice?
This whole thing is also based on the premise that poor kids around the world NEED INTERNET ACCESS? I mean, come off it. This is the kind of tripe that University students gobble up. They want to make the world a better place because they haven't had a taste of reality yet, not in the protected cocoons that university and college are. Kids around the world need MEDICINE, FOOD, and FRESH DRINKING water before they need the Internet. Also, there is this assumption that kids around the world need to be highly educated. You can't apply Western society principles to 3rd world problems. Here, you can't make it without a degree or high school education, you can't get a job, and if you can't work you can't afford the high cost of our society. You can't buy land cheaply here and even live off it and become self sufficient without money. There, its a simpler life. The cost of living is very inexpensive and those societies are not career oriented and materialistic. They can live off the land (if its not famine or drought stricken) and can find jobs labouring or other simpler jobs that don't require high education. The only problem is that Western corporations are exploiting these people and imposing Western philosophy in those regions, so many are becoming career oriented and materialistic. Western society is creating an environment of poverty in 3rd world countries by trying to improve the quality of life, which simply drives up the cost of living making it more difficult to live in these areas. There is nothing wrong with not being able to read or understand math or physics, as long as your happy, well fed and contribute to society, which is how
Perhaps if the RIAA keeps sending people to court, this may eventually bankrupt them.
I am sure any lawyer would love to go head to head against the RIAA, considering how lackadaisical the evidence is against these people, I am sure many of these cases will be thrown out of court.
I would counter-sue the RIAA to recouperate legal fees wasted in defending myself in court, which I would probably win because of the lame suit against me.
In the end, considering the average court cost is about 10,000 - 20,000, the RIAA could loose up to a quarter of a billion dollars going after these people. Tie in civil suits against and if you could play off damages or anguish charges, this amount could skyrocket!
Then, if I were a music artist, I would wonder why I would allow a association that would waste more then a quarter of a billion dollars to alienate my fans to act on my "best" interests. I would then tell my music publisher that if they don't pull out of the RIAA then I would go independent and market and sell my own music, or publish my music in another country.
In any regard, the RIAA should sue away, it will be their undoing and I support it whole heartedly.
The stream of drivel coming out of Hollywood these days is considered art by Ebert?
Don't ask a 90 year old if they think video games are art.
Art is simply the creation of something, and while it is debatable what that thing is, art is anything that CAN be created.
I question when I go to an art gallery and see a canvas of all black paint that cost $1.2 million to purchase as "art", but it WAS created and to some people it is art.
There is definitely lots of artistry in games. From the artists the create the environment to the programmers that can spin code to allow the art to come to life, games are all about creation and imagination.
Ultimatly, I feel that art is taking a dream and making it reality. Whether thats putting paint on canvas, or assembling 1's and 0's together to create video game, one without imagination like Ebert, who can only comment and criticize on the creativity of others, should not be a judge for what art truely is.
Why not make cars that don't crash and planes that don't fall out of the sky. I mean, why can't engineers simply build better cars and planes.
Software isn't simple, period. Patching software, especially in a large and mature product could introduce undesirable results or stability issues, or further security holes.
Patches are not just about writing up a few lines of code and adding it to the pile, the patching process needs to ensure that changes to an existing system doesn't affect other systems and features.
Also, don't say company X patches quicker or is able to do things better. Company X may have a smaller code base, newer code base that is easier to handle, or simply doesn't focus on preventing instability or incompatibility by introducing patches as much as Microsoft does. For instance, Apple often introduces incompatibilty and other annoying issues after releasing a patch that eventually need to be fixed as well. I would prefer a company to issue a patch that doesn't force me to patch again because they broke something, rather then one offering a knee-jerk upgrade ASAP. Few other company have a finger in 98% of computer users and the kind of scrutiny MS goes through, so few feel the pressure that MS does to release patches timely as well as ensuring stability.
I am not defending MS for having products that require so much patching. Obviously there are fundamental flaws in their code base that allows it to be exploited so easily. Systems like Unix and its derivatives were inherently secure from the ground up, they were always intended as networking OS'es. Windows was not. Networking in Windows was an afterthought.
Anyways, to whine and say that MS should fix patches faster just eludes to people's ignorance about how software development works. I don't think MS is holding back patches just to annoy and frustrate people or that they are not concerned about security like what so many zombie anti-Microsoft pundits suggest. Microsoft is releasing patches as soon as they can fix the problem while not introducing new ones, just that their system is so flawed that it takes a large team and a lot of time to do that.
First, I have grown accustomed to ignoring online ads. I have NEVER clicked on an ad, and by extension bought something from a web site in that manner.
I have also dabbled with creating a website using ads and can safely say I am not making any of that $12 billion. Again, few people click thru an ad and buy a product. In fact, browsers like Firefox ship with the default setting for cookies to delete them after exit from the app, or at least this option is available. This means that many websites using cookies to track performance of ad clicking won't work for a lot of users.
Also, their is more public outrage about online advertising and many products are being offered to combat this pervasive nuisance. Pop-up and ad blockers are being integrated into even Internet Explorer and those savvy enough are using Firefox which handle them better. I use Norton Internet Security with the ad blocking enabled. Anyone with Linux skills can setup a proxy server that will only serve context stripped of advertising. Obviously, there is a big market for people wanting to avoid online advertising.
Who is saying online advertising is working, Google that gets paid to put ads up regardless of whether they actually generate sales, or the people advertising reporting that ads are actually drawing people to their websites (directly) and making purchases (directly).
In my opinion, online ads are becoming ineffective as people strive to ignore or block them.
Pretty much my philosophy is to comment any section of code that IS NOT OBVIOUS what it's intent is.
//Loading X with the value 5
//Initialize Y to be false
//Initialize Z to 10.2 because it is important
I mean, any reasonably skilled programmer should be able to look at a block of code and understand what is going on without an excessive description of what the original programmer intended to do. But there are always those cases, especially if the original programmer got crafty and found ways to streamline or optimize the code for performance, where anybody not involved in the original development would just scratch their head and wonder what the heck is going on.
Comments can be very detrimental in many cases. If I get some code that is heavily commented, to the point where the actual code is separated by long blocks of commented code, I just nuke the comments and condense the file. I have actually found files that are thousands of lines long be reduced to only a few hundred lines be removing superfluous comments, and the actual code is easier to understand without the unecessary comments.
NOBODY should ever write a comment like
int x = 5;
I mean, this is a very obvious and exagerated case, but often this happens. It is very obvious what the code is doing, anyone with at least 1 day of programming lessons can understand it easily.
Usually, its more like
bool y = false;
Why should y be initialized to false. I many cases, false is just an arbritrary initial value, but in some cases, the initial condition is important, this importance should be commented and highlighted.
For the most part, comments end up being inaccurate.
double Z = 6.1;
So what do you do here? If your reviewing the code, is 10.2 still the important value, or has a bug been fixed by changing the inital value to 6.1. Is a bug occuring because Z is not 10.2?
As a programmer, one should never blindly read the comments and not review the code. Learning to understand the code makes more sense then deciphering the comments. In most cases, the comments are either superfluous, meaningless, or just wrong. The best skill a programmer can learn is to ignore comments and read the code.
Ultimatly, I comment a block of code to give a general sense of what I am trying to do. I don't go into particulars within a section such as why I am deleting a pointer or loading a value (it should be obvioius what your doing), its the end result that is important, not all the minutia involved in getting there.
Also, I CAN'T stand notation that lists the history of file changes. I mean, the CURRENT code is what your interested in, not what someone did 6 years ago. Knowing that person X modified Line Y in 1992 is of no benefit to my ability to read, understand, fix, or update code in 2005. Often, these modifications refer to code changes that no longer exist in the file. Someone made a fix to code in 2001, but someone in 2003 rewrote the whole code, the 2001 fix is irrelavent. Serious programmers invest in a source control product, like Visual Source Safe, CVS, or SubVersion. These programs STORE the history of a file, there is no need to write a header that can be hundreds of lines long telling you about all the bug fixes and file changes. If you need to review old code, simply go into your source control and compare the file between 2005 and 1992 to find out what is different and changed. Often, most of the people involved in the file's history no longer work at the company.
Lastely, one of the MOST important commenting tricks is to insert nothing at all! A blank line can speak volumes. It can separate functional sections in code, allowing you to understand the flow of the code and realize when certain results are accomplished. I am an object oriented programmer, so seeing blocks of functional units where a blank line separates some operation or result just makes sense (even more if you turn the code section into a class
I could never understand the mentality that some books are made for girls and others for boys, especially once they hit the teen years. I can see as children pink based books for girls and blue for boys, ones about dolls, the other about cars, but later in life, books need to stop having a gender associated with it. I guess teenage girls are more interested in stories about relationships, or positive female roll models, but if you know a girl that loves science-fiction, getting one aimed at girls is probably an insult. I am sure there are those authors that cater to the idea that girls want stories about relationships, so fit that in some guise as a SF novel, but in general, I think any SF should appeal to someone interested in the genre. I guess it is difficult to find books not written in the male dominated genres like SF, which may focus more on male characters rather then being a little less sexist. But then, isn't it sexist to believe that girls need to be pandered too by only letting them read books by female authors or about female heroines. I think you have given them a good start of some of the many essential classics that any SF fan should read, a few more then I have read for that matter, but to cater to some tired myth that girls are only interested in girly stuff might insult your neices. If they don't like the books you have been giving them, then the may not be interested in SF as much as you think. Having said that, one suggestion not mentioned in your list is the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan, and while he has essentially written a soap opera with now 11 books in the series, the first 6 are very well written and offer a good balance of male and female characters that should appeal to girls. This is more Fantasy then SF, but you did mentioned books by Tolkein and Ann McAffrey and such which are being lumped into the SF genre wrongfully. Terry Goodkind and his Sword of Truth series is also good, as is Melanie Rawn and Sunrunner's series.
The first video game crash happened because there was only one dominant player in the market, Atari. Its game console was slow to advance, and so developers were forced to release new games that featured the same stale graphics and ideas as games from 5 years ealier. Despite there being other players in the market like ColecoVision and Intellivision, Atari was the dominant force and when sales of Atari units and games dropped the market bottomed out.
Now with 3 dominant players in the market, I wouldn't be so quick to believe or propose that the video game market will bottom out like it did back then.
True, there is a trend to release the "same old games" with new eye candy, as with Quack 4 and and Doom3, the whole industry has been wrapped in the idea that customers are hungry for the next major evolution in 3D graphics, even if its the SAME GAME over and over again. Some offer us better sequels, but many simply offer us the same game in a new package.
But, what the Inquirer article fails to realize is the variety of games out there that will keep the industry a float even if the customer base revolts against sequels.
First, there is a large nostalgia market that has built up over the years. From proprietary game controlers that come with x number of built in classics, to collections being released for new game consoles and on PC, there is a strong market for people looking to go back to a time when games were played that were simple, addictive and one learned to play them by instinct rather then thought.
Second, the mobile sector is striving to offer ubiquitous gaming, on PDA's and cellphones. While not as profitable as game console sales, this is a strong market segment where people like to play the same old puzzle and platform jumpers that have kept them occupied for years. Throw in the PSP's and Gameboy's that revamp games from a generation or two behind the big consoles and you will always find a market of consumers looking for something to occupy their time. Back in the days of Atari, the only electronic mobile games were a few LED's on a static surface.
Thirdly, innovation is still strong in the game industry, Nintendo can attest to that. Between the DS and the upcoming Revolution, Nintendo won't allow the game market to stagnate into a series of cloned sequels. Even though they are now up to Mario Something X, by offering novel (or even gimmicky) game play like dual screens, touch screens, or motion sensors, they can still bank there will be a market willing to eat up these sequels simply because they are offered in a novel form factor (i.e. kids). It might be more rare, but many other companies offer new and innovative games, people just have to live on the wild side and give these titles a try rather then only buying the Quack, Doom, Halflife sequels.
Fourthly, the graphics card market still isn't finished giving us new and improved technology. As long as there are some substantial improvements in game graphics, people will be curious and excited about new games that offer state-of-the-art graphics technology. Game sales will be strong until they hit the photorealistic level of quality, where you can play a game with CG as good looking as what they do in movies. People will want to buy new games simply because they still are avid about buying new graphics hardware. There is also upcoming physics hardware add-ons that will allow for improved realism in terms of offloading complex physics onto a dedicated chip. These games will offer us unprecidented gameplay as they strive to incorporate more advanced physics and realistic interaction within virtual worlds. There will be a big consumer drive to find and play games incorporating this new technology.
Finally, there are still strong sales for repeat visits to old favourites. People are eagerly anticipating a sequel to Duke Nukem and Wolfenstein. Civilization 4 just topped the best sellers list, and I am sure any new Sims sequel will have strong sales along with their plethora of Sims add-ons.
If your a serious programmer, learn how to manage your own memory. With the exception of C++, most other development languages are intended for rapid application development senarios. Typically people involved in this level of development are not native programmers, but people from other career paths that got into programming out of necessity for the job rather then a real desire to develop software for a living. I am NOT saying that these people are not skilled in what they do, just that programming wasn't their first love or forte. They haven't spent years learning the ins and outs of software development, or have worked years honing their skills. Memory management is one of those things that requires discipline. You need to do things in a specific way, and if you don't, you leak memory and cause program/OS instability. Only after years of dedicated programming does one learn how to write code that does not cause memory leaks (and even then it can easily trip you up), you learn the skills and tricks to control the allocation and deallocation of memory. People using RAD tools or languages with garbage collection are focused on the end product rather then skilled design. The limitations of disciplined programming eat into their ability to get the job down quickly and efficiently, they didn't spend years learning to program, they need to get the job done in a few weeks or months. Garbage collection in these RAD tools means they don't have to worry about highly disciplined programming. From what I have seen, ANY language with garbage collection is typically NOT used for high performance applications. They are used for web or database front ends, intended to be a UI layer between data and the user. I have never seen a Visual Basic, Java, or C# language used for scientific calculations (nothing serious that is), or high performance software where speed is a concern. In any regard, if all you ever intend to do is to make UI front ends for web services or databases, then any language with garbage collections will suit you fine, you don't have to worry about the finer points of developing software and can simply focus on the final product rather then the details on how to get there. The extra overhead garbage collections imposes on these higher level languages will not be noticed or undesirable in the final product. But, if there is a chance you may need to develop a high performance application, or if you think you may be developing in C++ or another non-managed language, learning how to effectively allocate and deallocate memory is an invaluable skill to learn.
Apple will get this wrong on the first try. They have been slow to get into the HTPC market (do mac's even support 5.1 surround sound?) and Steve Jobs has said that PC/TV connectivity is a fad that will never last.
He also said that more then one button on a mouse is superfluous, and he renegged.
He also said video on a MP3 player would never take off, and he renegged.
So, chances are, despite Stevie saying that PC/TV connectivity is a fad, its probably that he just feels nobody has "done it right" yet, and will come out with Apple's version of the PVR in the near future.
What will really happen is that they will simply tie in iTunes Music Store more intergrated with the Mac Mini and market it as an iTunes media appliance. The "PVR" feature will simply be buying and downloading television shows from the music store. Apple will say they innovated the On-Demand PVR.
It would not make sense for Apple to suddenly allow their customers to record and playback television from cable when they went to great lengths to form a partnership with ABC to sell television shows for iPod usage. I am sure ABC would not like it if Apple customers could suddenly simply record episodes of Lost and burn their own DVD's as opposed to paying for the episode.
But, in the end, this may be one of those unfounded Apple rumours. Someone may have got a tidbit of information about the features that might appear in the Mac Mini, and blew it out of proportion. In any regards, Apple is now about 3 years behind in terms of HTPC and I doubt they will get it right on the first try because the company seems to be at odds as to how these things should work.
Sorry, but even a 300gb holographic disk, as cool as it sounds, is too little, too late, especially with a 20mb/s transfer rate. This would take 40+ hours to backup a typical desktop hard drive, this is NOT exceptional by any measure of the word.
Simply put, tape and physcial media backup is a dead concept. With the fact that most common desktop drives exceed the storage capacity of a tape backup, and the fact that it is dirt cheap to get a 200gb+ hard drive, the 'new' way to backup is to setup an offsite SAN and stream your data over the internet.
With the cheapness of hard drives, it is easy to setup terrabyte RAID systems, completely with stripe sets, mirroring, and redundancy to create a robust and efficient "live" backup system, have your data uploaded during off peak times, or even in the middle of the day. As long as someone keeps an eye on the fitness of the drives in your system, there is no reason to perform physical backups to static media.
This announcement comes about 5 years too late. And while there may be some applications of this technology, I think it will fail to catch on and simply become one of those technologies that has been leaped frogged before it even hits the shelves.
It makes no sense except to fill a Hollywood plot that alien's would be evil, malevolent creatures bent on distruction or take over of our planet.
First of all, this idea suggests that there is already a very advanced race of alien's out their that have grown tired of exploration and research and just bent on harvesting resources from other worlds or simply bored and looking to destroy as many worlds as possible.
From what we have been made aware of, through Seti and astro physics is that life on other planets so far is unique to only our own, and even if there is life on other plants, it is extremely rare.
Why then would an alien race even consider the destruction of another planet? I think any significantly advanced race of aliens capable of interstellar travel would enjoy meeting another race and working in cooperation to help both of us improve our view of the rarity of life in our universe.
It would be far different if we have ample and obvious proof that life existed on other planets. If we could hear alien signals, or could easily assertain that life widely existed in other solar systems then I would be fearful. Like in any culture or species on Earth, once land or resources run out, it is typical for the dominant species to aggresively seek out more space or more resources. I could then very easily see an alien race, filling their homeworld to maximum population and straining their supply of essential resources, striking out and taking over another world out of despiration.
This isn't the case. As far as we can tell, we are singular in the universe, but even if not the case, there is no suggestion that an alien world would seek out to destroy us.
Secondly, the idea that aliens could simply write a computer virus that would take out our technology is ludicrous. How would they have any understanding of our computer technology to write an effective virus? Viruses work because they emulate software and are executable by computers. Alien's couldn't just write any software, they would have to know how our programs work in order to make an effective virus. If order to do that, they would either already have to be on our planet, or near enough to capture wireless transmissions. If that were the case, then there are easier ways to sabotage or destroy our population then sending a virus to take down our internet.
Ideas of beaming viruii to destroy our technology and Internet are just crazy Hollywood ideas. Its not even an original plot, any "scientist" claiming that this is a serious issue isn't worth his weight in popcorn.
Had it on my Maxtor for the last 3 months. Way to catch up with the times.
But in general, most hard drives are still severely underperforming, regardless of their specs on paper. Its the single biggest bottleneck on today's systems, causing system hangs and stutters on even the fastest systems.
This industry needs a kick in the ass!
300mb/s transfer rate on a system capable of procssing 8GB of data per second, that is nothing to rave about. Also, most systems still work off the principle that you can only read or write one operation at a time. Sure caches offer speed improvements, but there is no reason why a hard drive can't have multiple read/write heads to access different sectors of the disk as the same time, turn a SINGLE drive into a STRIPE set. It can be done if you put your mind to it.
In order to get decent performance out of hard drives today, you have to buy 3 or more drives and setup a RAID 5 system and waste one drive for redundancy. But of course, the hard drive makers want you to do this, buying 3 drives instead of 1 to get decent performance is their goal, I am sure.
The problem is, hard drives have reached a point where they are cheap commodities. The leaders in this field have long since figured out how to make cheap and reliable drives while increasing storage space proprotionally to a reduction of price. Prices for hard drives keep getting cheap, and hard drive makers are not making that much money off them anymore.
This is why the whole external hard drive fad has started up, taking a $50/unit hard drive, stuffing it into a $25/unit external enclousure, and charging $300 retail for it. Add a back up button and maybe a USB port on the front and you suddenly create a "Must Have" product.
Because of this, there is no motivation to improve the technology. They figured out a few years ago how to dramatically increase storage space breaking what they preceived to be a physical barrier, and since then hard drive storage capacities double every year. With the ability to stack bits on top of each other, we will hit terrabyte storage capacities next year easily. But they are using the SAME TECHNOLOGY, the same magnetic media, read/write heads, packaging, I/O boards and chips, cache, etc, etc, etc. They may tweak these componenets to work with higher capacities, or improve performance somewhat, but nothing has really changes in terms of how hard drives are manufactured and designed. Compare this with the CPU industry that re-invents itself every 18-24 months.
Where are solid state hard drives? Where is my obscenely fast gamer performance extreme drive capable of feeding data to my video card in real time? Where is my tiny thumb sized drive capable of storing terrabytes of data?
The hard drive industry is just dolling out minor improvements and tweaks to existing technology, and expecting to be slapped on the back every time they boost storage capacity by a third or transfer rates by a quarter. Something seriously needs to happen in this industry to make hard drives hot technology again, its grown quite stale and cold over the last 10 years. Until then, I am underwhelmed with these kinds of press releases. Way to go Western Digital, your doing what EVERYONE else in the hard drive industry is doing! Sucking!
If they are going one about the whole "Remote Controller" concept, it will be a gimmick. Widely used in Nintendo's popular titles like Mario Party or Metroid, many third party developers will come out with a few novel games, but as long as other game consoles and the PC market use "traditional" gamepads, it will not be revolutionary.
I am not dissing the Revolution's RC, I think it will be fun if done right and depending on how well they integrate the add-on components, it could become a major selling feature of the Revolution. It could also become their crutch if ALL games for the Revolution must make use of this novel gimmick. But will it change game controllers forever? No.
Asside from that, there is nothing truely revolutionary about the Revolution. Sure, Nintendo will make their back library available for play on the new system, again a gimmick that will drive sales in the first year or so, but I bet Nintendo will opt for a subscription based service that people will grow tired of paying some $X amount of money a month to play games they already owned. Also, this concept isn't even NEW. PS2 could play its entire back library, and the new Xbox360 offers an arcade marketplace for downloading and playing old game favourites from arcades and PC shareware.
For size, I bet the Revolution will be the smallest again, but traditionally Nintendo isn't big on "slick" designs, and usually the end result looks more like a Fisher Price product. I expect that we won't see the slim silver/white wedge that their PR department has been coming out with. It will probably be made out of cheap plastic with handles and other superfluous design elements that aim more for the young gamer market.
From that point forward, your really talking about a game console with the same specs as each of the new game systems, albiet a little anemic compared to the PS3 or Xbox360, as was the Gamecube in its generation. I do agree that Nintendo's focus on "Games First" is beneficial, I really don't care about DVD/music playback on my game console, and those features have NEVER been used on my PS2. Focusing on games rather then state of the art DVD formats should be the focus of any game hardware, and I will welcome Nintendo's much cheaper price compared to the all-in-wonders Xbox360 and PS3. How many games out there in all honesty require 20 to 50 GB of data storage. NOT ONE, PERIOD.
So, will Nintendo evolve the game industry? Considering they have played catchup for the last 10 years, I doubt it. Nintendo may be able to create a breakout success with the Revolution after the lackluster "success" of the Gamecube, but one thing Nintendo NEEDS TO PAY ATTENTION TO, the gamer market is now longer composed of people 15 and under. Nintendo really needs to start focusing on adult gamers, like the Xbox and Playstation do, and as long as they keep insisting on cheap gimmicks and revamps of Mario Party and Pokemon products, they will never start a Revolution in this industry.
Its public ignorance responsible for the widespread propagation of mosquitoes. Even surrounding a city with some form of mosquito net will not help matters.
People leaving stagnant water in their yards, whether its a bird bath or old tire sitting in the corner is where mosquitoes breed. The city sewers and various waterways also contribute to the problem.
I.e. there is little to nothing you can do short of poisoning the environment to get rid of mosquitoes.
The city would be better of issuing public education programs on how to prevent an infestation of mosquitoes in their own backyard rather then wasting money on those "magnets".
Its like trying to heat the outdoors with a candle. Yes, in theory it should work, but there is just so much air to heat then what the candle can handle, and with these magnets, they just don't work, period. They may collect a lot of bugs, but there are billions more where they came from.
From ticket agents to bank tellers, many are adopting slick UI and flat panel LCD's in place of large black and green CRT terminals with old legacy applications running on them.
The biggest mistake being made is to force those users to require using a mouse instead of preserving the quick key input from the previous software.
In many cases, a mouse just doesn't make sense to use. Often the area these terminals were original installed lack the space to place a mouse effectively, forcing employees to adopt comprimises to use the mouse ( I have seen one person use a square of cardboard on her lap because there was not "desktop" space for a mouse ).
Also, I have seen bank teller more slowely get access to data simply because they are trying to use a mouse to navigate, wheras they used to hit a few keys and type in your account number. Many people are now squinting and trying to find the right box to put the account number into.
While there are great advantages to having a rich UI for form input, such as the ability to handle multiple screens using tabs, or even be able to handle multiple customers at once (i.e. easily put the other customer's form on hold while you work with another), most software vendors making these solutions are underestimating the power of quick keyboard shortcuts, instead relying on often the built in Windows shortcuts for cutting and pasting or tabbing between controls.
Any form based legacy application should be replaced with a modern day GUI app that keeps the keyboard shortcuts intact, in fact, these apps SHOULD be developed WITHOUT mouse support, period. A few new keyboard shortcuts may be needed to switch between active on screen forms, but once in a form window, the keyboard should be used exclusively.
A small part of this is the fact you can't teach an old dog new tricks, some people are just adverse to change, and regardless of how much training or experience, they refuse to integrate the new methodology into their being. Thus they will always find using the new system cumbersome and frustrating. But a bigger part of this problem is that software vendors are quickly rolling out rich GUI appliations without one consideration for how the previous system worked.
A mouse works great on in a desktop office environment where your not required to quickly process customers. A mouse IS slow data input, period. Effectively figuring out keyboard shortcuts will increase your productivity greatly. The time it takes to pick up a mouse, move it, coordinate it with a GUI element, click on the mouse and move your hands back to the keyboard for data input is no where near as fast as the almost instinctive, muscle memory like sweep of fingers over a keyboard combo to do the same operation.
That last full revamp of my computer I did was about 3 years ago and I am itching to get a new system. But looking at ALL the processor choices as well as video cards and motherboards can be a little staggering.
The bottom line is, don't worry too much about price, and start to focus on particular brands.
If your last computer ran smoothly for a number of years, then stick with the brands you are familiar with. They probably won't fail you again with your new computer.
Sure, some other brand might offer a super deal on a seemingly sweet piece of hardware, but generally the cheaper the component and the more off-mainstream the company, the worse the product is. Why risk buying something that claims better features for less money when you are familiar with a brand that offered you years of quality.
So, once you decide what brands you like and find reliable, then decide what CPU you want.
I recommmend AMD, period. Any 939pin Athlon 64 will give you ample performance in an easy to afford package with an upgrade path that should last a few more years. Don't worry about the dual cores, they are new, underperforming and still a novelty for desktop workstations. See TomsHardware.com ultimate CPU guide to realize just how underwhelming the dual cores are.
Next time to get a motherboard that suits your needs, it may be trying, but weeding out first those motherboards with dual or quad SLI solutions or can connect to 16+ hard drives with RAID X is a good way to weed out wasting money on features your never going to use. You will find that whatever brand your looking at usually has a few good and reasonably priced motherboards that don't have superflous bells and whistels. Asus is still a top notch motherboard maker and offer both premium and price conscious models.
For video cards, nVidia, period. ATI still can't make good drivers, I upgraded to a mid-range x700 for sh*ts and giggles after using an nVidia Geforce 4400ti for years and found my system suddenly unstable, crash prone, and underperforming. Most games I played with the new card was only about 10% faster then the nVidia card that was 2 generations behind. I quickly returned the ATI card, and I won't look back. Again, don't get caught up in the hype surrounding different brands of products, if you find a product that works well for you, and offers years of stable performance, the keep with that brand.
From there, your talking about ram and hard drives, any will do really. If your going for a high performance system, then you might care what the timings are on RAM, but for general systems where price is a concern, any Generic ram that fits in your motherboard will work, there are only a few makers of the actual chips that go on RAM anyways. Same with a hard drive, maxtor, seagate, western digital, may will tell you tale of horror about one or the other, but hard drives have become commodities that are easy to make and generally more reliable as the years go on.
The bottom line is, don't fear the industry. It is easy to fall behind and loose perspective on what is the latest and the greatest, but reading any hardware site like anandtech.com or tomshardware.com will quickly get you up-to-date on which products are hot and which are not and you will get a better idea of what to upgrade to if you spend a little time reading some review sites.
Lastely, if it still seems too daunting, get a Dell. Don't laugh, but after a certain age you don't care about finding the right component X to fit with component Y, getting a preconfigured PC means your going to get a decent system with the support and warranty that makes it a brainless decision in a box that arrives are your doorstep.
Steam was a good delivery system for HL2, despite having its first day jitters, but as a general eCommerce tool, it leaves little to be desired for.
After buying HL2 last year, I decided to buy another game through Steam, Ragdoll Kung-fu, the experience left me never wanting to buy from them again.
I preordered the game and on the day of release a message told me my credit card could not be authenticated. Thinking I might have just mis-typed my address or phone number or credit card number I went to reorder the game and found out I couldn't get it for the discounted pre-release price. I mean, ordering a pre-release is like reserving a copy, if your credit card failed to authenticate, you should be given a chance to rectify the situation and still get the discounted price.
It was only $2 off, so no big deal, the real problem is that when I ensured I entere correct credit card information, they said that my credit card could not be used with my account because it has been "used too many times"??!! I mean, I only used to twice, once to get HL2 and a failed attempt to get the new game. The message was cryptic and wrong.
Contacting customer support I found out they really didn't want to do anything, they told me I should use a different credit card and try again. Get real, I am not going to apply for a new credit card to buy a $14.95 shareware game from Steam. Steam implements some rediculous anti-fraud scheme, if they don't want your money, I refuse to give them any.
Valve should stick with developing games because they can't develop an eCommerce solution to save their lives.
The reception of Quack 4 after years of hype has been lack luster, a minor update to an exhausted game franchise.
It's not so much that sequels are bad, its just when people don't innovate new ideas and revamp franchises is when I get a little ticked off with the same old rehash of an existing game.
Over the last decade, most companies have strived to make graphics updates to their popular games, and for a while, customers loved each new revision that offered slicker 3D graphics. But now, 3D graphics are not improving as quickly as they did 10 years ago, so a new better looking Quake 4, with the same game play and themes is kind of a waste of time and effort, and the consumers believe its a waste of money as well.
It you IMPROVE upon the original, then you have a valid case for making a sequel, but if your just upgrading the graphics engine, you have failed, period.
At least with HL2, they introduced physics puzzles and a more cinematic game plot along with fancy new graphics. HL2 was a game to experience as well as watch.
Its no wonder that John Carmack, the guy behind Quack and Doom, felt that adding gameplay features like physics is meaningless compared to improving graphics quality. Doom3 and Quack4 have been dismal failures despite improved graphics. They are not capturing a new audience and are even losing those that still remember the day they first played Doom in a dark dorm room.
Like Star Wars Episode 3, sequels without substance can leave a bad taste in your mouth, and consumers are starting to throw up over them.
I mean, unless this kind of performance is built into a camera, video or music player then who cares that it takes 20 seconds less time to transfer a few hundred megs of file to a flash drive. I have never found myself wishing my thumb drive was faster for transfering content.
Also, probably a big also, most systems hard drives significantly underperform, so are you even going to get that much improvement by a faster USB drive? No matter what I have done, I have never gotten sustained 48MB/s transfer from any IDE hard drive.
Well, if your a performance queen, then I guess you need the fastest and bestest, but its kind of wasted R&D to make a USB drive smoking fast. How about putting them skills into making desktop hard drives smoking fast instead of smoking hot and underperforming.
The game development field is probably the hardest field to get into, and enjoy it. You have to have both strong programming skills AND a creative edge over the millions of people that want to design games for a living.
No college degree is going to give you that.
Game companies are looking for people that don't learn how to design games from a book or from a degree, they want those people that started designing games on an old TRS-80 in basic at the age of 6, text adventures and stick graphics. They want people that started early in life learning the nuts and bolts of game design by ACTUALLY making their own games, spending hours and even days hobby building games from scratch, learning the basiscs without any other outside influence, except perhaps to play their favourite games over and over again to gleen some tidbit of knowledge into how that game was made and how they could dupliate or improve upon it.
I.e. they want people with passion about making video games, not just those that think it would be a cool job.
For those people, those that get a degree in "Game Design", or those looking to enter the game industry just because they think its cool or will get them rich, there are LOTS of menial programming jobs in the game industry for those kinds of people. And from what I have heard, these are not the kinds of jobs people want for a career. Some may be able to move on and actually get into the main development team, most drop out and get a job in some other industry. These kinds of jobs are troubleshooting and game testing or meanial game programming (i.e. your told exactly what to develop, you can't impart any creativity or originality in the code, only develop by spec).
Colleges that claim to be able to give you an edge over the competition and get into game design are simply banking off the fact that people today don't believe you can get rich quick, but if you take a 6 month diploma course then you have "earned" your right to get rich. Devry has made a mint telling people that their 6 month IT program will get you that high paying 80K a year job in a server room. Everyone knows education is important, but few realize that these 6 or 12 month crash-courses in the buzz technology/field of the day seldom impart enough practical knowledge that the industry you want to get into will look at.
In any regards, if your looking to get into the game industry, and never at least sat down and thought about how to design a game or actualy write your own game software, forget about it. There are going to be at least a few dozen or so applicants for any job you apply for that spend thousands of hours pouring over Quake's source code and writing their own version, or spent weeks moding half-life because they are actually passionate about game design, they just don't think its a cool job, but its their life.
Looking at an entirely wrong product. But yes, the Porche designed products by LaCie are underwelming to look at, and when you pick them up, they are cheaply made too. What do you expect from a guy that designs toasters and keychains.
10 years of handicapped graphics software.